


Si vis pacem, para bellum.

by LaFlamingo



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Minor Frank Castle/Karen Page, Mourning, Post-Episode: s02e13 A Cold Day in Hell's Kitchen, UST, in which micro makes an appearance, kastle - Freeform, killin drug dealers and stealing their cars and cash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 10:19:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11826708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaFlamingo/pseuds/LaFlamingo
Summary: I'm not talking about vengeance. Revenge is not a valid motive. It’s a tawdry, emotional response no better than the act that provokes it. I’m talking about punishment. Si vis pacem, para bellum.





	Si vis pacem, para bellum.

**Author's Note:**

> _Si vis pacem, para bellum_ : if you want peace, prepare for war. Quote directly lifted from the _Punisher: Year One_ by Dan Abnett.

His first thought on the rooftop is that life is fucking weird when it gives you ninjas as an enemy. 

The second is, fuck it, might as well enjoy the novelty when it lasts.

              

Frank burns the house down.

 He finds his third (fourth? It’s hard to keep counting) bolthole, 0400 out in Queens, no one awake yet and that bite of winter beginning to nip when he reaches for the rusting steel doorknob barehanded.

 It’s a cot and it looks like heaven and so he props up the rifle next to the wall, disgorges of the flak, keeps the boots on and then by God he fucking sleeps.

 When he wakes up nearly a day  later, it feels like he’s slept years.

 

Adrenaline is a hell of a high, but goddamn is it also a bitch of a low. His back aches in ways he’s never known it to, not even after weeks out in the field, months out in Korengal, in Kandahar, in other shitty places with too much dirt and sun and shit and not enough of anything else.

 Everything hurts. Not enough fentanyl lollipops (Actiq, bless them regardless) or ibuprofen or hot showers are gonna make it hurt any less.

 So 36 hours after falling into the closest thing to a coma he’s had in probably eight (nine?) months, Frank grunts, push off the cot and go to the pull-up bar in the back.

If the pain isn’t going to go away now, he might as well embrace it and keep moving.

 

Frank may be a stubborn, pigheaded son of a bitch (Maria said it sometimes with kindness, but often times _not),_ but he is not necessarily a stupid son of a bitch, and in this grudging spirit of he commits to nothing but reconnaissance and more reconnaissance. Tendons in his ankles are shot, his knees ache and muscles he hasn’t felt screaming since basic are reminding him that they are alive, and in agony.

For two weeks and some change, he does lay low.

It is excruciating and -- above all -- boring.

 

              

(Karen’s new place is smaller than the last, but he’s relieved it’s nowhere near Hell’s Kitchen. Sometimes she curls tightly into a ball on a ratty-ass looking couch and does nothing, television volume seemingly turned on low and face tucked into her knees, that sunshine hair turning shades of blue, and green.

(He won’t admit how long she’ll do this. It lasts longer than just minutes.).

 

Week three passes. His knees hurt less. His back barks anger in short, erratic bursts. The bruising is almost completely gone on his face, and he’s been grudgingly growing out a beard.

It itches, and he finds that he hates it, but New York has a short memory, and now he can follow targets in the daytime.

Frank finds a meth dealer out of downtown Brooklyn who’d been getting cocky, getting violent. It’s shit enough that curb stomping is his specialty, that he excels at using some Chinese made sticker to cut lines in faces, arms, backs.

It’s another when he tugs the girl with greasy brown hair down to the ground in his dilapidated apartment and swings a soccer kick at her stomach with some beat-to-shit jungle boots the asshole stole from a Goodwill. When she screams and begs him not to because, “There’s a baby, Alex! A baby!”

“One shot, one kill,” is the goal of a sniper. But the motto of the 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion is: “Swift, silent, deadly.”

 In the spirit of his battalion, Frank dedicates two weeks to committing to that objective.

                                                                                                                          

((Red has been suspiciously absent. Frank will not admit openly to exploring the blind man’s territory (and _no shit_ , of course he fucking knows), but he will admit that it has been over a month since he’s felt a goddamn stupid billy club smacking into his wrist. Or head. Or back. Hell’s Kitchen stays quiet, and eerily calm. He can’t tell if its waiting with bated breath for the next shoe to drop, or if its moved to a next staggering and crawling stage in its long, grimacing, ugly life. ))

 

It’s dealers for a few weeks.

 Sniffing down pimps another couple of days.

Word is that the Kitchen Irish is in twitching, death throes, but leads turn up nothing.

Frank wakes up Thursday night and the sleep was dreamless, but it was restless, blankets kicked off the cot and neck tight and wound in that manner that says he might have been thrashing. The room is dark, but he stays there in the black for a long time.

Finally, he reaches absent-mindedly for the light. Walks, joints cracking, to the pull up bar and busts out sets until his arms feel leaden. Mindlessly walks to the punching bag crammed in the only other room of this bolthole and starts in on it, jabs and crosses and anything else until – until—

He takes a step back, rests his hands on the bag and stills it.

There were voices.

Treading water in the freezing fucking Hudson with the rifle heavy and cold overhead and trying so goddamn hard not to sink under the weight of _everything --_ the vinegar stench of the heroin bags that had been punctured, the old man’s saliva slick and bloody on his hands as he rammed the gun barrel into his mouth, that short gasp from Karen when she looked towards the soda fountain and saw the brain matter sprayed three feet up the side, teeth and pulp and blood –

He remembers voices.

The Blacksmith is dead. Whoever was caught in the concussive blast from the boat? Also, probably dead.

But there are others. Frank knows there are others.

              

(He stops in a diner Saturday morning – 0400, maybe 0500, and on a whim grabs one of the papers sitting on the main counter. They’re most pictures now, right? Pics and ads and bullshit. But halfway down the first page, he sees it, can’t turn away.)

 

( **KAREN PAGE,** the byline reads. He skims it long enough to see it’s corruption with some pharmaceutical in town and _stubborn_ , he thinks, _so goddamn stubborn.)_

 

 

 

 

So the next step is the CD he found in the house.

“Micro,” it says.

 And he’s not the most tech savvy motherfucker, no; he and Maria had Skype down out of necessity, and he can troll search engines like the best of them, but the most reliable info seems to come from fists and bullets. He spends a good five minutes eyeballing the CD, picking it up and looking at the back, noting no scratches, but nothing else.

  He put it there, he thinks. It must’ve been after Goodwin’s funeral; one of three of his Marines to lose to suicide and he remembers that, but not _who_ gave this CD to him, or the exact circumstances. But Goodwin is in the photo with him and the fucking Shitbird Colonel, and so maybe that’s the tie, here. Goodwin, the runt of the litter who survived two deployments and god knows what else, who called late in February muttering nonsense and _fear_ , fear like nothing he’d seen in him under fire and under pressure, even after the 500lb IED in Kandahar put a fucking crater in the ground but besides busted ear drums, Goodwin grinned, teeth blood-red and said, “Yeah, sir, I’m fine.”

He don’t have internet, here. Beyond that and this plastic piece of shit laptop, it’s hard to imagine anyone will be tracking him anytime soon.

Frank Castle is dead.

 So he puts the CD into the drive.

 

 

 

David Linus Lieberman is thinner than he expected; a bit of that potbelly that Frank sometimes dreams he’d have start to develop if – if ( _meat and cordite and Lisa slick, slick and red)_

if the kids had gotten sick that day – if he’d had stayed home and thrived and turned forty, a little fat, a little lazy. But Lieberman’s got a bearing about him – not military, no, but stern, shoulders back and eyes quick but disconcertingly steady. He looks to be maybe in his late forties – gray at the temples, thick glasses.

He is not nervous to see Frank.

No one else _(lie)_ has had the audacity to not be nervous around him since this began.

“Good morning, Frank,” Lieberman says, voice low and calm. “I already ordered coffee.”

He left the side of the booth closest to the wall open for him, and Frank sits down.

 

“How was the drive?” Lieberman asks, idly stirring two packets of sugar into his coffee and an obscene amount of milk.

It’d be easy to posture and try intimidation. It really would. This man is not tiny, but he is not big, and he may have convinced Frank to drive all the way out to the Poconos in a car he may or may not have jacked from a shitbag he’d been following out in Vinegar Hill, but in his eyes that still doesn’t mean too much.

 But goddamn it, he is fucking tired. And Lieberman gave him the seat that had the back to the wall. And he ordered coffee.

 It’s as good a peace agreement as he can get right now.

Frank clears his throat. Tries to displace the rasp that comes out first.

 “It was long.”

Lieberman doesn’t give him a sympathy smile, but he raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, I bet,” he says.

 Frank shrugs at that, wraps his fingers around his coffee cup and soaks in the warmth. He notices Lieberman’s eyes flicker down for a second at the motion and see Frank’s knuckles, all the bruising that’s turning yellow and the scabs that have started shrinking, but all Lieberman does is blink slowly, and then look at the menu.

“The omelets here are good,” he glances over at Frank. “I’m paying, so don’t worry too much about binging on whatever you want.”

 Frank’s cup of coffee is already gone, and he idly rocks it in his hands. “With all due respect, it’s the coffee I need.”

Lieberman shrugs. “Yeah, but MRE’s are a recipe for constipation and depression, so why don’t you just get yourself the steak and eggs or something?”

Frank stares at him levelly and he looks up from the menu. Noticing either the stiffness in his posture or how he’s starting to hunch his shoulders, Lieberman sighs, putting down the menu. He looks around the restaurant idly for a moment before leaning forward with his elbows on the table.

 “Cutting the bullshit,” he says, his voice quiet, “I’m not here to fuck with you, son. I know the news and I know very well what you’re capable of, but I’m not here to play games.”

Frank lets that sink in for a minute. Looks around the restaurant. It’s 0600 and this diner is still waking up, groggy and bleary in late January, no one but old, morning-bird retirees and maybe a few fed park guys having coffee and early breakfast. The murmur of voices and the soft hiss of a kitchen getting moving prevail. Lieberman stares at him, eyes watchful but calm.

“What do you want?” He finally asks.

 “To help you,” Lieberman says.

 

For the world being such a large place, sometimes it can be very small, and in Frank and Lieberman’s case, it is a small world indeed.

Steven Goodwin was his nephew, Lieberman tells him, sister’s side, from her second marriage. Good kid, proud of him when he became a Marine, but, “After I got into my line of work, it grew harder and harder to keep in touch.”

Instinctively, Frank finds himself clenching up on the knife he’s cutting into the steak, but he don’t pause or look up. “What kind of line of work?”

 Lieberman arches one eyebrow when he responds, “Not the killing or raping kind, I promise.”

Frank drop the fork with a loud _clang_ onto his plate, knife still in hand, and stares at him. “What _kind?”_

Lieberman doesn’t flinch. “I’m a hacker, Frank. It should have been at least a little obvious from the CD.”

And sure, it was. They don’t train recon guys in all that computer mambo-jumbo, because it’s not in the job description, but yeah. The encryption was unusual, the information in the folders classified at the least, shit that hadn’t seen the light of day _ever._

Frank rolls his shoulders back the slightest bit. Picks up the fork and shrugs. Lieberman eyes him coolly before continuing.

 “Steve –” and he stops for a moment, takes a bite of his omelet and looks out the window. “Goodwin never asked me for help. Or his mother. But she came to me midway through his second deployment.”

“What about?” Frank talks around a mouthful of steak. He will not admit this, but it is medium rare and fucking delicious and the first real meal he’s had in a while.

   “How he was doing. What he was saying. Goodwin never talked much to any of us about – about what he did over there –”

  _It’s Afghanistan,_ Frank want to correct, but finds the ability to rein in.

 “But towards the end of that deployment, Mags started coming to me with concerns. He’d send off emails that didn’t make a lick of sense, like he was crazy or maybe speaking in code and who the fuck knows what else. And she’d tried to get him to talk more, but he wouldn’t. Or – maybe, _couldn’t._ ”

Frank stops chewing. “So you want me to tell you what we did there.”

Lieberman shakes his head. “No, Frank, I don’t. I already know.”

Frank swallows, then carefully put down the knife and the fork, leans back and stares at him.

 Lieberman glances up from the food, sees the look and exhales loudly. Puts his silverware down and then brings his fingers to his temples and rubs them, looking down at his plate.

 “Look,” he says, after a moment of chewing on the inside of his cheek. “The Blacksmith killed my nephew. If he didn’t kill him personally, he found a way to fuck with him to the point where he killed himself. And my sister didn’t know what the fuck to do; her twenty three year old son, the star of her life, appeared to off himself and when she started to dig through his emails, maybe to find some closure or figure out what’d she’d missed – _how’d_ she’d missed the signs, she started getting weird calls and messages.”

  “Goodwin’s funeral was only a week after his death.” Frank watches him carefully.

 “Yes.” Lieberman looks at him. “But from his return from that deployment to his suicide, it was enough time for me to start noticing patterns in emails that Mags hadn’t – or didn’t want to – notice.” He sighs again, reaches for his cup of coffee. “Beyond that, a week is plenty of time to ponder the mistakes you made with loved ones who have been taken from you. In my case, it gave me time to try to connect at least a few of the dots.”

Frank picks up the knife and fork and take another bite of steak before he continues. “And why me? How did you know that I wasn’t a part of it?”

 “For one,” Lieberman says, and this time his voice is dry, “your line of work implies that such nasty shit isn't your bag.”

 “For two?” Frank grabs his cup of coffee.

 Lieberman looks down at that. Pauses for a long, sad, moment. “In his emails,” he starts, “Steve told Mags that he’d follow you into hell. That you were the only – the best – officer he’d ever had and that of all the shit that was happening, he trusted you with his life.”

_All the more fucked up to lose him_ , Frank thinks, and it hurts. It hurts bad because these are his men and he managed to get them back Stateside and then – and then –

_My job was to keep them safe._ He said it in a hospital room and it felt like fucking years ago but it wasn’t. None of this was long enough and an ugly ache starts to throb in his chest.

“I had a feeling you and a couple of the other men would be at the funeral,” Lieberman continues, “Mags had shown me the reception list – and so I thought I’d take a shot and get something to you.”

When Frank doesn’t respond, still staring at his hands around his mug and thinking, _deep breaths, calm breaths,_ Lieberman tilts his head a bit to the side. Suddenly curious.

 “Do you not remember any of this?” he asks.

Frank takes another drink from his coffee, mentally aware it’s the fourth cup but past giving a shit. The silence before he answers the question is a long one.

 “It’s been a long few months,” he finally says. “I've -- I've forgotten some things.”

  Lieberman says nothing, but nods.

Frank glances at his watch. The door jingles and the sky is lightening to a gun-metal gray, something morose and cold. It’s 0645, now, more people filling in and grabbing coffee, a family maybe here for winter break taking a spot three booths down from them. They sit in silence for more than a few minutes, and Lieberman looks contemplative as he finishes the omelet and stares out the window.

Frank finally clears his throat. Lieberman looks over.

“So how can you help me?” he asks. “What can you do, that I can’t do myself?”

Lieberman nods, understanding, glances over his shoulder at the family three booths down, the kids beginning their raucous and grumpy morning appeal for food.

 “You much of a computer man, Frank?” he looks back at him, and there may be some humor in his eyes but he’s doing a good job at hiding most of it.

Frank glares. Glances down at his cup of coffee and notes that it’s empty.

 “No,” he says, grudging.

 Lieberman nods understandingly, before he continues.

 “Look, I –” and for the first time he looks a little hesitant – “I did some digging.”

 “How much digging?”

 “Enough to get an idea of the scope of what you did, and – more importantly – the money involved.”

 Frank scratches at his nose. Feigns nonchalance. “I’m a dead man, Lieberman. I don’t have any money.”

  Lieberman snorts at this. “Bullshit you don’t. I’ve weaseled my way into enough police reports to know that there was _money_ involved in these meet-up massacres. Money that mysteriously went missing.”

Frank goes very still. The waitress comes by and refills his mug, but for the first time he doesn’t thank her, instead staring very hard at Lieberman. “You saying that I stole that money?” he speaks, voice very low, even when the waitress is far enough out of earshot.

Lieberman – somehow – seems to be getting more bold, as opposed to less, and if Frank was in less of a defensive state of mind, he’d find himself impressed.

 “I’m not saying you’re a thief or Robin Hood,” Lieberman says. “But what I _am_ saying is that having that cash in the flesh, on hand, at all times, is more of a liability than anything else.”

 “How do you know I even have that money?”

Lieberman manages to give him a look that says, _cut the bullshit._ “I am not a military man, and I am not a spook, but I know the kind of money required to disappear. For someone who was wanted for over 30 deaths, plastered on all social media and media outlets and should have died on numerous occasions, you did a very good job staying hidden, staying fed, and somehow fixing yourself.” Lieberman takes a sip from a glass of water nearby and continues to glare at Frank. “That kind of shit?” he finally says. “That requires money.”

 Frank acquiesces with only a grunt, chewing on the silence for a moment before speaking. “So why,” he takes a drink of his coffee (fifth cup in, but he’s past heart palpitations now), “should cash not be on hand? Hard cash is more untraceable than electronic shit.”

 “It is,” Lieberman agreed, “but in large amounts it becomes a burden to carry, because you have to protect it. Say you lose a hide-out, or some shit goes down; yeah, you might be able to get some of the money back. But on the downside, maybe that money returns to the hands that shouldn’t have it.”

Frank looks outside for a moment. Looks back. “So is that all you have to offer me?” he finally says.

  It’s surprising that Lieberman doesn’t look deflated at that. Instead, he leans back in his booth and crosses his arms over his chest.

“No,” Lieberman says. “It’s not. But it’s a start.”

They eat the rest of their meal in silence; Frank methodically cleaning off the plate, and the side bowl of fruit that he ordered, and finishing two glasses of water. Lieberman never reaches for a cell phone, never starts to look skittish or anxious, but instead stares out the window. Frank had hoped that the silence would start to get to him, start to wear him down, but the man seems collected.

 Frank coughs. Lieberman straightens up in the booth.

“I’m not going to say yes,” Frank says, “because I don’t know shit about you.”

 “Okay."

“I don’t know what you want – or what you gain – from any kind of arrangement with me. For all intents and purposes, I'm dead.”

 “Yeah,” Lieberman agrees.

 “So – so why?”

Lieberman looks at him, then sags and rests his elbows on the table.

 “Look, man. I lost family to what the news is saying is the same asshole that killed your family. More than that – I’m tired.”

 Frank grunts, unimpressed. “Tired of what?”

“Tired of seeing this kind of shit go down and not being able to do fuck all about it.”

“You could be like Eric Snowden,” Frank says wryly, “if your hacking skills are what you say they are.”

 “Sure,” Lieberman says, “and end up in the same shithole that he’s stuck in.”

“So what can you do?”

Lieberman leans forward. “Frank,” he says. “My nephew said he would follow you to the deepest, darkest places imaginable without hesitation. I do not believe it is my place to judge you for what you’ve done, but I do believe that it may be in your best interest to get help when you need it.”

  _Help_ , Frank thinks, then stiffens. Some good that did for others, for – for Karen and her blind crusade for him. For Red, who lost what appeared to be his woman. Help is a weakness. Help is dangerous. “For what? With what?” he growls.

 “With information that you can’t beat out of someone,” Lieberman says. “Information that you were never trained on how to access, how to break into. You’re not an idiot and you’re not incompetent, but you have limitations as much as the next guy.” And as he sees Frank’s shoulders rise and eyebrows furrow, he adds, “As much as a Marine like you can have limitations.”

Frank relaxes his shoulders slightly. Doesn’t notice when his trigger finger starts to tap incessantly on the side of his coffee cup, which he now clutches in a death grip. Lieberman’s eyes flicker over, but he says nothing.

 “I’ll think about it,” Frank finally says. “I’ll think about it and get back to you.”

 Lieberman nods slowly, then looks away to reach for the check.

“That’s all I’m asking."

 Frank cracks his neck, rolls his shoulders before standing up. He does not reach out to shake Lieberman’s hand as he pulls on a black beanie over his head and inches his hands into gloves.

 “Thanks for the coffee,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing this while I try to mull over what to do with a work I started last year. 
> 
> I don't believe Frank would still be in brutal kill-mode after getting his revenge, because dude is straight beat-up. I think it would take time to really develop his new mission and purpose -- even with the dope new flak and terrifying attitude. 
> 
> So...maybe this has a continuation. Maybe it doesn't. Feedback is always appreciated. Also, Micro makes an appearance. Noice.


End file.
